[InChristAlone]

..."Christ has two perfect natures: divine and human. These two perfect natures are joined ‘without change, without confusion, without separation, and without division’ in the one person of Christ, according to the definition of the Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon.

Now then, by means of the union of the two natures in the person of Christ, human nature is irrevocably united with devine nature. Because Christ is the eternal God-man. As the God-man, He ascended to heaven. As the God-man, He sits on the right hand of the Father. As the God-man, He will come to judge the world at the Second Coming. So, now, after the incarnation of the Lord – we can unite with Him and so become gods by Grace.

A union, of course, not with the Divine essence, but with the deified human nature of Christ. (BTW, after our resurrection, people will have the same deified bodies - spiritual, immortal and incorruptible. I.e. when the Eastern Orthodox read the Apostle Paul's words about life-giving spirit, they understand it not just as some spirit that gives life but deified body of Christ, the body of new Adam, first-born of the dead. It is just in the context).

The Church is the body of Christ, the real body, not a moral one. Because we are members of Christ's body, Christ's life is offered to us and it becomes our life. And thus we are enlivened, saved, and deified. We could not be deified, had Christ not made us members of His Holy body.

Man can achieve deification because God is not only essence, as the West thinks; He is also energy. If God was only essence, we could not unite with Him, could not commune with Him, because the essence of God is unapproachable for man, in accordance with: ‘Never will man see My face and live’ (Exod. 33:20) If we were able to unite with the essence of God, we too would become gods in essence.

If we grasp a bare electric wire, we will die. However, if we connect a lamp to that wire, we are illuminated. We see, enjoy, and are assisted by the energy of electric current, but we are not able to grasp its essence. Let us say that something similar happens with the uncreated energy of God.

Again, if God had only the divine essence – of which we cannot partake – and did not have His energies, He would remain a self-sufficient god, closed within himself and unable to commune with his creatures.

With these, His uncreated energies, God created the world and continues to preserve it. He is present in nature and preserves the universe with His preserving energies; He illuminates man with His illuminating energies. Finally, He deifies him with His deifying energies.

So, we unite with God through His uncreated energies, and not through His essence..."